Snow Burns
by Lynyrd Lionheart
Summary: They fail in the past so Emma disappears. The future has never looked bleaker.


**AN: One of two one shots written for tumblr user stuckindisney. They asked for a story where Hook and Emma fail to fix things in the changed past. It gets angsty.**

**Snow Burns**

Snow burns.

She burns and her screams reach them, even where they stand in the tower, looking down at the courtyard. Soon, Regina's laughter joins the screams, and Emma wants to scream with her mother.

Snow screams and burns and is reduced to ash, and Emma begins to fade.

Killian holds her close, but even as he watches, she disappears. It starts at her fingertips, then works its way up her arms, until Killian is left with an empty embrace and no chance to say good-bye.

"What just happened?" he hears Marian, or perhaps it was Red, ask… but Killian doesn't answer, because he is fading as well. Or perhaps it's the world that is fading, he has no way of knowing. Colors mix together, spinning and spiraling until there is just a void. Until Killian floats, nothing but a lack of sensation and memories of _her_.

Then he opens his eyes, he's on the deck of the Jolly Roger. And how did he get there? He gave Her up for Emma. Emma with her beautiful green eyes and golden hair and…

Who is Emma?

He feels a moment of confusion as the recesses of his mind chant the name. _EmmaEmmaEmma_. Then that is gone as well, and he turns to his crew, with a smirk and a shout. They've just destroyed another of King James and Queen Abigail's ships, and he knows the pair will be boiling mad, but what does Captain Hook care of royals? All royals have ever done for him is kill his brother and try to kill him. The lot of them can rot in hell, but until that happy occurrence happens, Hook will be happy to steal from them to finance his ever-lasting quest for vengeance.

He has a crocodile to skin, after all.

He steers his ship towards the horizon and rubs his chest, frowning as he feels the pang there, caused by the name _Emma_, branded there even across time, though the Captain has no recollection of it.

CSSS

King James rubs the scar on his chin as he has almost every day since the wound there scabbed over and healed. Abigail frowns at him, and James gives her a tight smile. Twenty-eight years of marriage and ruling, and the two of them had never fallen in love. Abigail visits a statue in their garden and touches it with more affection than she's ever shown him, while James recalls a bandit with skin pale as snow who burned bright as the sun in her death.

Her screams haunt him to this day, and at night he dreams of her, waking to find himself grasping to something elusive and out of his reach.

He is told that the pirate, Captain Hook, has attacked yet another of their ships, and he sets out to lead the expedition for his head himself.

When they meet for the first time, James looks into Hook's eyes and for a moment he thinks _Charles_… only this man is cold, looks nothing like the man who he had almost befriended, who disappeared as mysteriously as his princess years ago, taking with him his promises of true love.

When Hook runs James through, he wears a smirk that fades as the two men's gazes clash. James falls to the deck, his fingers running along the scar, _Snow_ the last word on his tongue. Hook rubs his chest, his heart beating out _EmmaEmmaEmma_, though he can't hear the cry.

Why he gives the King a sailor's burial of honor he will never know.

CSSS

Regina sits in her dark castle and gloats that she rules the world. Snow is dead, and despite her last words, her kingdom belongs to the Evil Queen. She sits on her throne and rules over them all with fear, and she thinks it's a far better way than the love and honor her pathetic husband had preached.

He wound up dead, and Regina rules them all.

With Snow gone, she is able to turn her attention to others. To the supposed Bandit King that roams the forests.

Robin Hood.

Just his name makes Regina sneer. And his ideals?

Honor has no place in this Kingdom.

When she rounds up the fool and his merry men, she smirks as she puts them to death. It's only after, when she orders their burial, that she sees the bandit's tattoo.

It's a lion.

It's a punch to the gut.

She stares, then she turns and walks away.

This is her happy ending. She has no need of what _Tinker Bell_ once offered her.

CSSS

The pirate searches for a way to end him, and Rumple rips out his heart, watching as the light fades from his blue eyes. He supposes this is his chance to finally bury the hatchet in the man's head, but he doesn't take glee out of the action as he once would have.

Something had gone wrong.

He was supposed to find his son. He was supposed to, apparently, make peace with this man. He was supposed to fall in love and be with Belle.

Now he stands, pirate dead at his feet, no son, in love with Belle, but not with her. She is dead, the pirate is dead, Bae is still beyond is reach, and the Saviour doesn't exist, all chances of her burned to ash along with Snow White.

He considers killing _The Evil Queen_, pretentious little brat that she is, but Rumple is weary. Waging war against Regina is almost beyond him, the weight of all he lost bearing down on him. Regina was meant to cast his curse, but now that she has all she's ever wished for, Rumple must begin again with someone else.

He waves his hand over the pirate's body, making it vanish. Out of sight, out of mind, and with this reminder of a future that will not be gone, Rumple once again turns to his plans.

There are other True Loves, and other potential apprentices.

Roland Hood has a particular thirst for vengeance these days, and foolish boys are far more predictable than foolish girls anyway.

**AN: So the prompts were angsty. I discovered I don't much like writing angsty OUAT stories… but at least I know I can, I guess. Let me know what you think.**


End file.
